Saving Ceecee Honeycutt

I've of two minds about Beth Hoffman's Saving Ceecee Honeycutt. On the one hand, the first part of the novel manages a deft little tap dance between the dark and heavy (I'm giving nothing away when I say that Ceecee's mother's mental illness is the cog around which the entire book turns, and her mother's suicide is the defining moment of Ceecee's short life) and the delightful (Hoffman puts a bounce in Ceecee's step even when she's confronting the horrors of her father's infidelity or her mother's madness. All of which is to say, I just knew this was a book I would love. But.

After Ceecee's mother commits suicide, her father cedes Ceecee's upbringing up an eccentric great-aunt from Savannah whose life is 180 degrees from anything Ceecee has previously known. Overnight, she's transported from small town Ohio to Savannah, plopped amongst her aunt's equally eccentric neighbors and friends. In Savannah, Ceecee quickly makes friends with her aunt's housekeeper, Oletta, and it's here that I began to have my doubts. Oletta is a fantastic character, full of her own brand of fun and joy, don't get me wrong. But.

Despite Ceecee and Oletta's friendship, despite Oletta's reverence for one Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., despite a racially charged encounter between a white man and Oletta's friends, despite the fact that the entire book takes place over the course of one summer in 1960s Savannah, it felt like Hoffman glossed over what could only have been the - the - issue confronting Ceecee every day of her new life. Yes, Ceecee's mother was from Georgia - Miss Vidalia 1951, thank you very much - but she had lived her entire life in a tiny midwestern town and I had a hard time buying what Hoffman was selling in the later chapters.It's a shame, too, because I'm a little gaga for Savannah, myself, and generally have a soft spot for Southern literature. Saving Ceecee Honeycutt just missed the mark, though.